The Sixties

The year 1968 witnessed one of the great upheavals of the twentieth century, as social movements shook every continent. Across the Global North, people rebelled against post-war conformity and patriarchy, authoritarian education and factory work, imperialism and the Cold War. They took over workplaces and universities, created their own media, art and humour, and imagined another world. The legacy of 1968 lives on in many of today's struggles, yet it is often misunderstood and caricatured.

Voices of 1968 is a vivid collection of original texts from the movements of the long 1968. We hear these struggles in their own words, showing their creativity and diversity. We see feminism, black power, anti-war activism, armed struggle, indigenous movements, ecology, dissidence, counter-culture, trade unionism, radical education, lesbian and gay struggles, and more take the stage.

Chapters cover France, Czechoslovakia, Northern Ireland, Britain, the USA, Canada, Italy, West Germany, Denmark, Mexico, Yugoslavia and Japan. Introductory essays frame the rich material - posters, speeches, manifestos, flyers, underground documents, images and more - to help readers explore the era's revolutionary voices and ideas and understand their enduring impact on society, culture and politics today.

Paperback Palgrave 2019    This unique volume brings together literary critics, historians, and anthropologists from around the world to offer new understandings of gender and sexuality as they were redefined during the upheaval of 1968.

"1968 is one of the most fiercely debated and misunderstood transformative years in global history. This extraordinarycollection takes us out of our comfort zones and brilliantly shifts the terms of discussion away from the cheerful celebration of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll to the more terrifying and painful stories of brutal repression, agonized shame, and conflicted aspirations. It decenters the typical western tales told about 1968 by bringing in the vantage points of Havana, Mexico City, Prague, and Dakar, while offering utterly fresh accounts of developments in Paris and San Francisco as well. The beaten, burning, and yearning bodies evoked here withsensitivity and rigor change how we think about the intricate interconnections between emotions and politics." - Dagmar Herzog, author of Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics

"1968, like 1789 and 1848, is a watershed year in the history of revolutionary movements, one whose events reshape everything that follows. Drawing on archival research, close readings of texts and images, and political analysis to reframe these events in a comparative global context, and foregrounding the hitherto neglected significance of gender and sexuality, Frazier and Cohen s new interdisciplinary collection proposes major revisions in how we think about 1968 and what has come since." - Andrew Hoberek, University of Missouri-Columbia

"Frazier and Cohen's collection considers the centrality of gender and sexuality in a year of global political ferment.Essays on events and social movements in Africa, Europe, and the Americas challenge conventional scholarship, raise new questions, and provoke new directions in our thinking about why 1968 mattered then, and why it still does today."-Lisa Duggan, author of Twilight of Equality: Neoliberalism,

CONTENTS
Cultural Politics and the Attack on Democracy

“Out Now!”: Antimilitarism and the Politicization of Homosexuality in the Era of Vietnam    Justin David Suran

Los Duenos de Mexico: Power and Masculinity in ’68  Elaine Carey

“Your Sexual Revolution Is Not Ours”: French Feminist “Moralism” and the Limits of Desire  Julian Bourg

Plus ça Change… Gender and Revolutionary Ideology in Cuban Cinema of 1968
Emily A. Maguire

Africa and 1968: Derepression, Libidinal Politics, and the Problem of Global Interpretation  Steven Pierce

Spirit, Awakenings, Imaginaries, Beyond ’68

Talking Back to’ 68: Gendered Narratives, Participatory Spaces, and Political Cultures  Deborah Cohen, Lessie Jo Frazier

Acts of Affection: Cinema, Citizenship, and Race in the Work of Sara Gomez
Susan Lord

The “Burning Body” as an Icon of Resistance: Literary Representations of Jan Palach
Charles Sabatos Ph.D.

Ambiguous Subjects: The Autobiographical Situation and the Disembodiment of 68
Michelle Joffroy

The Spirit of May 68 and the Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement in France
Michael Sibalis

Afterword Michele Zancarini-Fournel (Translated by Deborah Cohen and Lessie Jo Frazier)

Since its creation in 1964, readers from all over the world have loved the comic Mafalda, primarily due to the sharp wit and rebellious nature of its title character—a six-year-old girl who is wise beyond her years. Through Mafalda, Argentinian cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado explores complex questions about class identity, modernization, and state violence. In Mafalda: A Social and Political History of Latin America’s Global Comic—first published in Argentina in 2014 and appearing here in English for the first time—Isabella Cosse analyzes the comic’s vast appeal across multiple generations. From Mafalda breaking the fourth wall to speak directly to readers to express her opposition to the 1966 Argentinian coup, to Spanish students’ protest signs bearing her face, to the comic’s cult status in Korea, Cosse provides insights into the cartoon’s production, circulation, and incorporation into social and political conversations. Analyzing how Mafalda reflects generational conflicts, gender, modernization, the cold war, authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and much more, Cosse demonstrates the unexpected power of humor to shape revolution and resistance.